The UCSIM Team uses the service Wikispaces for many of our team websites, including this training guide and the main UCSIM Team Wiki. Wikis allow us to collaboratively document our progress on projects, communicate about team processes, update our customers and clients, archive e-mail templates, and much more.
UPDATE: Some of these procedures and locations of pages have changed since this manual was written. You should still review this material, but speak with you supervisor about what has changed before proceeding.
What is a Wiki?
Wikis are websites that allow collaborative editing. Many people can edit a wiki page, synchronously or asynchronously. Wikispaces is a particular service provider that offers the ability to create wikis for free.
We use wikis to coordinate and communicate important information between our team members and about the UC Second Life Project.
Joining the UCSIM Team Wiki
You should have created a Wikispaces account in the Getting Started section. If you haven't done that yet, go back and do it now. Then, navigate to the UC Second Life Project Team Wiki at http://ucslteam.wikispaces.com. Be sure to bookmark the page if you can't remember the address.
To join the UCSIM Team Wiki, make sure you are signed into your Wikispaces account, and click the "Join" link in the upper right corner of the wiki page.
The request will be sent to your supervisor. You will have to wait for approval to join the wiki before you can edit any of the wiki's pages. While you're waiting, notice the menu sections on the left side of the page. This is the main navigation for the UCSIM, and includes several sections of documentation.
UC Projects - Posting Project Updates
The first section of the wiki that you should examine is under the heading "UC Projects" on the left side. Click on any of the links under that section and you will see a typical project page where team members assigned to that project have documented the overall goals and objectives of the project, important links, design documents or directives, and then a section at the bottom where project updates are posted in reverse chronological order (so the most recent updates are at the top).
When you are assigned to a project, it is your responsibility to keep the project page updated with the most recent information, and you must post a daily summary of your progress - in the format: Date - Summary - Name - Hours Worked - for every day that you work on the project. If you have made significant progress on a build, please include a snapshot.
We provide our customers with a link to their project page so they can keep up-to-date on our work, see what progress we've made, and review and sometimes even edit the design notes and other input that they may be providing as we work on the project. Customers expect to see frequent updates and the documentation you provide in your daily summary may also be used to calculate hours worked on a project for billing purposes.
For this reason, it is critical that your updates be truthful and updated every day to ensure our records are accurate. Failing to keep project pages updated or falsifying project updates is grounds for termination. We take our responsibility and commitment to our clients very seriously and these project pages are the records of our work performed. Be sure to document all work performed for projects before leaving for the day at the end of your shift.
Customer Service - Delivering Great Customer Service
The next section of the UC Second Life Project Team wiki that you should examine is the "Customer Service" section. Our first duty and responsibility is always to our customers, which includes not only students, faculty, staff, and members of the University of Cincinnati community, but also anyone who visits our virtual campus in Second Life. Providing great customer service can mean many things, from using proper spelling and grammar in all of our written communications, to being timely with our responses to questions, to being knowledgeable, helpful, and friendly when assisting our customers. This section of the wiki is where we document our processes and provide resources so you can deliver excellent customer service.
The first link, "Customer Requests", is where you document the customers you have served. This is a link to a Google Spreadsheet where you can record the date, name, description, and other pertinent details about your interaction.
The rest of the Customer Service section includes support materials such as email templates for responding to customers, step-by-step instructions for performing certain tasks, and other information needed to provide great customer service.
You will learn more about providing support for various kinds of questions and issues later in your training, but for now just be aware that this area of the wiki exists.
Support Team - Coordinating Our Efforts
The next section under "Support Team" includes several pages with information about our internal team, including the agenda and notes from our weekly meetings, a checklist for new employees, a page for all staff to list their work schedules, and Style Guides that specify rules for written communications for the project. Take a moment to briefly review these pages.
Further in this section you will learn to edit existing wiki pages and add new pages to the wiki. When you've completed those sections, you should go to the "Work Schedules" page and enter your work schedule and account names for each account that you created in the Getting Started section. See other staff members' schedule sections to use as an example.
Miscellaneous - Maintaining Records & Archives
The next section under "Miscellaneous" is an area to keep records and archives related to the project. Take a moment to briefly review the links in this section.
As you can see, these pages document aspects of the UC Second Life Project that might be important in the event of disaster recovery, project continuity, etc., including an archive of documents that we create within Second Life. You may use this section of the wiki for reference, but generally this area is edited by full time staff members only.
How to Edit an Existing Wiki Page
Now that you have a general understanding of what kinds of content exists on the UC Second Life Project Team wiki, the next step is to learn how to make edits and changes to the pages so you can update pages yourself.
Make your first practice editon the UC Second Life Project Team wiki. Under the "Sandbox" heading on the team wiki, click the Testing Page link to navigate to a page where you can practice using the wiki editing tools. Click the "Edit This Page" button to start making your first practice edits.
Be sure to make your practice edits under the line and click the "Save" button when you are done!
You should have noticed that editing the wiki is very similar to editing a Word document. You can highlight text and then click a formatting option in the menu, or even embed files, images, and widgets.
View a brief tutorial about embedding files and images into a wiki page:
View a brief tutorial about embedding widgets into a wiki page:
For more advanced help and to learn about the Wikispaces markup text editor, see the help topics at the Wikispaces Help Center.
Chapter 2: Office Procedures - Using Wikispaces
The UCSIM Team uses the service Wikispaces for many of our team websites, including this training guide and the main UCSIM Team Wiki. Wikis allow us to collaboratively document our progress on projects, communicate about team processes, update our customers and clients, archive e-mail templates, and much more.
UPDATE: Some of these procedures and locations of pages have changed since this manual was written. You should still review this material, but speak with you supervisor about what has changed before proceeding.
What is a Wiki?
Wikis are websites that allow collaborative editing. Many people can edit a wiki page, synchronously or asynchronously. Wikispaces is a particular service provider that offers the ability to create wikis for free.
We use wikis to coordinate and communicate important information between our team members and about the UC Second Life Project.
Joining the UCSIM Team Wiki
You should have created a Wikispaces account in the Getting Started section. If you haven't done that yet, go back and do it now. Then, navigate to the UC Second Life Project Team Wiki at http://ucslteam.wikispaces.com. Be sure to bookmark the page if you can't remember the address.
To join the UCSIM Team Wiki, make sure you are signed into your Wikispaces account, and click the "Join" link in the upper right corner of the wiki page.
The request will be sent to your supervisor. You will have to wait for approval to join the wiki before you can edit any of the wiki's pages. While you're waiting, notice the menu sections on the left side of the page. This is the main navigation for the UCSIM, and includes several sections of documentation.
UC Projects - Posting Project Updates
The first section of the wiki that you should examine is under the heading "UC Projects" on the left side. Click on any of the links under that section and you will see a typical project page where team members assigned to that project have documented the overall goals and objectives of the project, important links, design documents or directives, and then a section at the bottom where project updates are posted in reverse chronological order (so the most recent updates are at the top).
When you are assigned to a project, it is your responsibility to keep the project page updated with the most recent information, and you must post a daily summary of your progress - in the format: Date - Summary - Name - Hours Worked - for every day that you work on the project. If you have made significant progress on a build, please include a snapshot.
We provide our customers with a link to their project page so they can keep up-to-date on our work, see what progress we've made, and review and sometimes even edit the design notes and other input that they may be providing as we work on the project. Customers expect to see frequent updates and the documentation you provide in your daily summary may also be used to calculate hours worked on a project for billing purposes.
For this reason, it is critical that your updates be truthful and updated every day to ensure our records are accurate. Failing to keep project pages updated or falsifying project updates is grounds for termination. We take our responsibility and commitment to our clients very seriously and these project pages are the records of our work performed. Be sure to document all work performed for projects before leaving for the day at the end of your shift.
Customer Service - Delivering Great Customer Service
The next section of the UC Second Life Project Team wiki that you should examine is the "Customer Service" section. Our first duty and responsibility is always to our customers, which includes not only students, faculty, staff, and members of the University of Cincinnati community, but also anyone who visits our virtual campus in Second Life. Providing great customer service can mean many things, from using proper spelling and grammar in all of our written communications, to being timely with our responses to questions, to being knowledgeable, helpful, and friendly when assisting our customers. This section of the wiki is where we document our processes and provide resources so you can deliver excellent customer service.
The first link, "Customer Requests", is where you document the customers you have served. This is a link to a Google Spreadsheet where you can record the date, name, description, and other pertinent details about your interaction.
The rest of the Customer Service section includes support materials such as email templates for responding to customers, step-by-step instructions for performing certain tasks, and other information needed to provide great customer service.
You will learn more about providing support for various kinds of questions and issues later in your training, but for now just be aware that this area of the wiki exists.
Support Team - Coordinating Our Efforts
The next section under "Support Team" includes several pages with information about our internal team, including the agenda and notes from our weekly meetings, a checklist for new employees, a page for all staff to list their work schedules, and Style Guides that specify rules for written communications for the project. Take a moment to briefly review these pages.
Further in this section you will learn to edit existing wiki pages and add new pages to the wiki. When you've completed those sections, you should go to the "Work Schedules" page and enter your work schedule and account names for each account that you created in the Getting Started section. See other staff members' schedule sections to use as an example.
Miscellaneous - Maintaining Records & Archives
The next section under "Miscellaneous" is an area to keep records and archives related to the project. Take a moment to briefly review the links in this section.
As you can see, these pages document aspects of the UC Second Life Project that might be important in the event of disaster recovery, project continuity, etc., including an archive of documents that we create within Second Life. You may use this section of the wiki for reference, but generally this area is edited by full time staff members only.
How to Edit an Existing Wiki Page
Now that you have a general understanding of what kinds of content exists on the UC Second Life Project Team wiki, the next step is to learn how to make edits and changes to the pages so you can update pages yourself.
Make your first practice edit on the UC Second Life Project Team wiki. Under the "Sandbox" heading on the team wiki, click the Testing Page link to navigate to a page where you can practice using the wiki editing tools. Click the "Edit This Page" button to start making your first practice edits.
Be sure to make your practice edits under the line and click the "Save" button when you are done!
You should have noticed that editing the wiki is very similar to editing a Word document. You can highlight text and then click a formatting option in the menu, or even embed files, images, and widgets.
View a brief tutorial about embedding files and images into a wiki page:
View a brief tutorial about embedding widgets into a wiki page:
For more advanced help and to learn about the Wikispaces markup text editor, see the help topics at the Wikispaces Help Center.
Continue to Chapter 2: Office Procedures - Using Twitter